Macquarie Dictionary

The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. It is generally considered by universities and the legal profession to be the authoritative source on Australian English. It also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. Originally it was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed, largely from the Linguistics department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It is now published by Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd. In October 2007 it moved its editorial office from Macquarie University to the University of Sydney, and later to the Pan Macmillan offices in the Sydney central business district. In addition to its two-volume flagship dictionary, shorter editions including the Macquarie Concise Dictionary, Macquarie Compact Dictionary, Macquarie Budget Dictionary and Macquarie Little Dictionary are published. History The first seven editions of the Macquarie Dictionary were edited by lexicographer Susan Butler, who joined the project in 1970 as a research assistant, and was its chief editor by the time the first edition was published in 1981. Butler retired as the Macquarie'''s editor in March 2018 after 48 years with the publisher. A detailed history of the dictionary and its associated publications is Pat Manser's More Than Words: The Making of the Macquarie Dictionary (Sydney: Macquarie Dictionary, 2021).